In Hurricane Matthew’s Path? What Employees Need to Know

One of the worst parts of hurricanes is waiting in a shutter-enclosed cave, knowing havoc is about to wreaked. Employers in the predicted path of ferocious Hurricane Matthew–most of eastern Florida, George and the Carolinas–are shutting down. Even Florida’s theme parks, like Disney World, have closed.

How many days will you be sitting at home, and will you get paid? Many cash-strapped, smaller companies also may be wondering: will they be able to curtail some losses by not paying staff for every single day they’re shut down?

The answer is a big maybe.

Whether you’re entitled to be paid when the office is closed depends on whether you are “exempt” salaried or not. Just being salaried doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t entitled to overtime. It’s possible to be salaried and still non-exempt from the requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Many employers misclassify employees as exempt to avoid paying overtime. If you work more than 40 hours per week, it’s better to be non-exempt. But in the case of weather and emergency closings, it’s probably better to be exempt.

Mostly, whether or not staff needs to get paid depends on whether employees are “exempt,” salaried or not. But the laws regarding military service and disaster volunteers also are important.

Here’s what you need to know in a nutshell:

Exempt Employees: Exempt employees who work any part of the work week must be paid their entire salary if the office is closed for a natural disaster such as a hurricane, snow, tornado or flood. Department of Labor regulations state, “If the employee is ready, willing and able to work, deductions may not be made for time when work is not available.” If the exempt employee is able to work while you’re closed for the storm, they must be paid even if they didn’t work any part of the week. Plus, if they are late getting to your office due to debris or unsafe conditions, even when it’s open, they have to be paid for any partial days they worked.

Vacation Time and PTO: Employers can deduct from exempt employees’ vacation or PTO time, but if you don’t have any vacation or PTO accrued, employers still can’t dock your pay if you’re exempt.

Non-exempt Employees: Non-exempt employees don’t have to be paid for the time the office is closed. However, if your company takes deductions and you’re a non-exempt salaried employee it may affect the way overtime is calculated.

Who Is Exempt?: Employees are not exempt unless they fall into very specific categories, such as executives, administrative employees, or learned professionals. The title matters less than actual job duties. You can’t call someone a vice president yet have them hauling equipment around or typing envelopes and still not pay overtime. In addition, your employer must treat you as exempt by not docking your pay when you miss work. This may be the rare time when it’s better to be exempt; the Department of Labor’s new rules expanding entitlement to overtime don’t go into effect until December 1.

Pay for Reporting to Work: If you report to work after a natural disaster, only to find out that the workplace is closed (assuming they didn’t notify you), many states have laws that require your employer to pay you a set minimum amount of time if you show up as scheduled. Florida has no such requirement.

Military Employees: USERRA protects military employees. Any employees called up for military service for disaster relief are legally protected. They have to give you reasonable notice, but that may be very short notice in a disaster situation. Employers can’t dock their seniority or benefits for their absence due to military service and you certainly can’t fire them. National Guard employees aren’t protected by USERRA, but they are protected by state law. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina all have laws protecting National Guard members.

Disaster Relief Volunteers: Florida has a law that allows state employees who are also certified disaster relief employees to take a leave of absence with pay for up to 15 working days per year. South Carolina’s similar law allows state employees up to 10 days of paid leave per year. North Carolina has a law stating that volunteer firefighters who are working disaster relief can either take an unpaid leave or use his or her PTO, at the employee’s choice. Just remember that if you’re working a for-profit company, you need to be paid–even if you “volunteer” to clean up after the storm.

Exempt Employee Can’t Come Into Open Office: Employers may dock an exempt employee who can’t come into the office for an entire day due to, for instance, their car being blocked by a tree or their street being flooded. But, the federal government will protect employees who are forced to work in dangerous conditions.

Working From Home or Alternate Location: Yes, companies must pay employees who work remotely or from a different location. Unless an employer actively prohibits such work, employees must be paid.

On Call: If employees are required to be on call for work as soon as the storm passes, for emergencies, or for any other purpose, then they have to be paid for their on-call time. If an employer has you on premises or requires you to stay nearby, then you must be paid, even if you’re not doing work.

Colin Kaepernick Says Death Threats Won’t Stop His Campaign

On Tuesday, just as protests turned violent after a fatal police shooting in Charlotte, North Carolina, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick made an announcement: the $1 million dollars he plans to donate to organizations that fight for racial justice will be dispersed in monthly increments of $100,000 for the next ten months. Further, he says that a website will be created so the public can track where the money goes and how it’s spent.

It’s a brilliant move that nobody saw coming.

Ever since Kaepernick made headlines for refusing to stand for the national anthem, the athlete has proven to be a serious and determined student of both race and advocacy. So far, he has been able to walk the fine line between using his big platform to shine a light on police overreach, while preventing the long shadow of his fame from snuffing out the conversation entirely. It hasn’t been easy. The simple act of kneeling during the anthem has driven some fans wild with rage, and compelled at leasttwo police unions to publicly threaten to boycott – selectively police – stadiums if the protests continue.

Kaepernick himself is receiving death threats. And not just from social media trolls, either. (Which, of course, are horrible enough.) Said Kaepernick to reporters, “To me, if something like that were going to happen, you’ve proved my point.”

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But this donation, and the transparent way it’s being managed, keeps social justice squarely in the center of the story. Perhaps even more importantly, it offers a gateway for people to learn more about the issues themselves, as well as the barriers that professional advocates have faced for years. And Kaepernick’s own transparency has been inspiring. As a result, the number of athletes, amateur and professional, who are kneeling or raising a fist continues to climb.

I e-mailed the 49’ers for a chance to speak with Kaepernick, and was politely told that he wasn’t giving any one-on-one interviews, at least for now. Understandable. By controlling the narrative to the degree that he can, he has a chance to keep redirecting focus away from himself, and back to the point.

And the point keeps being made. This Charlotte incident occurred just days after a horrific video of the shooting of an unarmed man named Terence Crutcher by a police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma went public, then viral. It shocked the nation and triggered a Justice Department investigation.

Kaepernick, however, is not backing down. “This is a perfect example of what this is about,” said Kaepernick of Crutcher’s death. “It will be very telling about what happens to the officer that killed him.”

Higher-Paid CEOs Are Found to Have Lower Approval Ratings From Employees

If you’re a well-paid CEO, your employees may not think you’re doing a great job.

That’s according to a new Glassdoor survey, which collected 1.2 million approval ratings from about 70,000 different publicly traded companies. From the data, researchers found that highly paid CEOs have significantly lower approval ratings than CEOs who are paid less.

As of 2014, the study notes, the average CEO has earned 204 times the amount of a median worker’s pay at S&P 500 companies, as top executives’ average pay has continued to increase in recent decades.

Pay raises are mainly due to merit, the study found, but some are the result of managerial power, i.e., the ability of CEOs to give themselves a raise. Out of the companies sampled, CEOs made an average yearly salary of $12.3 million.

Albeit complex, the study affirms that there is a link between CEO pay and employee approval within public companies at a high level. Overall, lower-paid CEOs received the highest approval marks, while higher-paid CEOs received the lowest approval ratings.

The study also found that when overall employee satisfaction is higher with a company, the effect of lower CEO approval ratings is lessened. CEOs who were also company founders boasted 3.2% higher approval ratings compared with those who were externally hired or internally promoted.

The study found that gender didn’t have a statistical impact on CEO approval ratings. But since women only made up 5% of the executives surveyed, it was hard for researchers to draw strong conclusions from such a small amount.

Age, tenure on the job, and education had no statistical impact on CEO approval ratings, according to the study.

Why Employers Need to Empathize with ‘Entitled’ Millennials

These are just a few of the words used by audience members during a panel about business management at Fortune’sBrainstorm Technology conference on Tuesday to describe their most recent serious conversations with millennial employees at their companies.

Jake Schwartz, the CEO of the business education company General Assembly, polled audience members about their interactions as a way to teach companies how to better empathize with younger employees who may have different values and desires than older ones. He cited an Accenture study that said a business could lose $20,000 when a millennial leaves a company, so it pays to keep those younger employees satisfied with their jobs.

Additionally, Schwartz said that salary is not the main reason millennials choose to leave companies. Instead, they will often take other jobs for reasons like career advancement, flexible working arrangements, and better training and skill development.

Paul Canetti, the founder and CEO of media technology company MAZ, said employers must think of their employees as customers who they need to constantly keep happy. Canetti, who once worked at Appleaapl, said Apple would go out of its way to keep customers happy in order to limit complaints that could damage its image.

If Apple were to replace a customer’s broken iPhone even though the customer didn’t have a warranty, for example, Canetti and his team believed that the customer would be happy and would boast about Apple to friends and family.

In the same way, companies must put themselves in the shoes of their millennial employees so that employees brag about them instead of carp about them.

If a younger employee complains about something at work, don’t say “Shut up, I’m paying you,” Canetti said. Instead an employer needs to put on one’s “empathy hat” and learn what is bothering that employee.

For more about Brainstorm Tech, watch:

Although it may be easy for an employer to say to an upset millennial, “You’re an entitled little brat, go to your desk,” Canetti said an employer should be more empathetic and say something less abrasive like, “I understand how you could think this is annoying to you.” These more cordial interactions can lead to happier employees and will lead to better way to solve problems that both employers and millennials can agree upon.

#1 Reason that Diversity Programs Fail

The most recent cover story of the Harvard Business Review, which explores diversity programs in U.S. corporations, is going to be a fascinating resource for raceAhead readers. Some of the findings, however, might be a bit of a gut punch. I’ll get right to it: Most diversity initiatives don’t work.

“There’s no reason to lose hope, though,” Frank Dobbin, Harvard professor and researcher, says. “It’s just that companies tend to spend money on the wrong things.”

Frank Dobbin worked with Alexandra Kalev, from Tel Aviv University, and studied data from hundreds of firms over dozens of years. They found that the three most popular interventions deployed by companies – mandatory training, testing and grievance systems – fall far short of stated goals.

In fact, they can make things worse. “It always seemed crazy to me that people thought that you could put people in two hours of diversity training and change their behavior,” says Dobbin. Instead, they often feel angry, and treated as bigots. It’s an important clue, he says, to what does work. “You need to get managers – who are typically white men-engaged in solving the specific diversity problem their company has,” he says. “All the successful programs have this in common.”

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Above all, he says, embrace efforts that will get people talking. “It’s important to remember from the psychological research that the worst thing you can do is never talk about race or gender in the workplace.” It’s the human stuff that matters, like hiring diversity managers, who are there to address the culture that currently exists, and diversity task forces, which convene leaders from different departments to diagnose issues and share ideas. And where diversity training doesn’t help, leadership skills training does. “All of these things make it possible for people to become more comfortable talking about race,” he says.

Mentorship programs also can help because of the impact they have on the mentors. “Most mentors are white men,” he says, typically two rungs above their proteges. Paired with a person of color or a woman, they’re often meeting people they might not ordinarily get to know.

And suddenly they discover that their company is toxic for some people. “What are they talking about? They’re talking about the kinds of problems they’re having with their managers or co-workers,” he says. “Nobody told them it was was hard to be black at their company. Now it’s their job to know.”

When she’s not writing about the world’s greatest rock star-leader, Ellen McGirt is busy working on Fortune’s raceAhead, a newsletter about race and culture.

These Are the 11 Best Workplaces in Health Care

The health care industry has been growing rapidly, adding nearly half a million new employees in 2015 alone. The sector is now responsible for one in nine jobs in the U.S.—and its share is only going to grow. Health care is expected to add the most jobs of any industry over the next decade, according to the Labor Department.

The employment boom, combined with changing care methods focused on quality over quantity, also means that there will be demand for new types of workers, from case managers to data analysts. As demand for these workers—and traditional doctors and nurses—increases, health systems and hospitals are competing to attract the best employees with a mix of great benefits, stable career paths, and supportive cultures. Here are some tips on how to get hired.

Work-life balance satisfaction was determined by a 5-point scale, with 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied. According to those surveyed, workers are becoming less satisfied with their work-life balance. In 2009, the average work-life balance satisfaction rate was 3.5; so far this year, it’s 3.2.

Tech jobs all rank above averagefor work-life balance. Data Scientist is ranked highest on the list with a work-life satisfaction rate of 4.2. It also lists the highest salary out of the 25 jobs with an average annual income of $114,808. However, throughout the rest of the list, high salary does not coincide with a healthy work-life balance.

Substitute Teacher is ranked 5th on the list with a work-life satisfaction rate of 3.9, though its annual income of $24,380 is the lowest on the list. The 25th ranked job, Front End Developer, has an average work-life balance rating of 3.7, but offers a significantly higher salary of $75,000.

These 5 employers are rescuing the 40-hour workweek

Rafat Ali wanted a different way of running his three-year-old travel intelligence startup Skift. Instead of the usual manic charge and a staff that might as well be living at the office, this year he instituted a new policy of no working weekends and strict 8am to 6pm hours.

By startup standards, that’s positively slacking, but it’s not so far off the national norm. The 40-hour week has become something honored more in name than in action. If you’re a full-time worker in the U.S., chances are that you’re working more. The average hours worked by full-time employees is actually 47 hours, according to a Gallup poll. (Take it with a little salt as studies show that people often overestimate the hours they work.)

Sweden is moving to the six-hour work day, or 30-hour work week. In France, a labor agreement signed last year requires companies to make sure that workers in high tech and consulting “disconnect” after working hours; for the estimated 250,000 employees covered by the agreement, that means not no emails and phone calls after 6pm. Amsterdam-based design studio Heldergroen actually enforces the end of the work day by cranking desks up into the ceiling, along with computers, paper, and that cup of coffee you were going to finish.

But these adherents form a small group. “Companies that have the long-term view of things will want to get the results but also have the good work-life balance,” says Jay Starkman, CEO of HR outsourcing company Engage PEO. “It’s just not that common when companies have that view.”

Here are a few U.S. companies that actively discourage working more than 40 hours a week.

When BambooHR started, the founders had the idea of a company where people might get a good work-life balance while still occasionally putting in extra time when a new release of the software is about to hit. But otherwise, “we want to build something that is going to be around for a long time,” CEO Ben Peterson told Fortune. “I’ve personally had interviews with individuals who are so gung ho to conquer the world: ‘I’m willing to work as much as necessary and be there all hours.’ They want to prove to the world what they’re willing to sacrifice and they’re not going to get that here.” Co-founder Ryan Sanders has written that the company has an “anti-workaholic” policy.

“A couple of years ago is when we made a stance,” CEO Mat Ishbia told Fortune. “Sometimes people think that it looks good to my leader if I stay until 6:30 instead of 6:00 because it looks like I’m a hard worker. A lot of people think I have to get there before the boss and I have to stay here after the boss.” Instead, the company generally suggests the people leave at 6:00 and skip working weekends. To make this happen, Ishbia says that he “over-staffs” to handle business peaks, which in another view might be called adequate staffing. The mortgage industry can by cyclical and there are times things get really busy even with the staffing. “If things are short, there are plenty of people who volunteer to work late to help,” he said.

Long hours may sound like extra value for the money to employers, but the results can be painful when services or products suffer. “Tired programmers start putting in lots of bugs,” CEO Rich Sheridan told Bloomberg. The office closes up at 6pm and employees aren’t even allowed to work from home. To help ensure that clients won’t ask for round-the-clock efforts, the company offers 25% project discounts in return for flexible deadlines. Menlo’s approaches to management have become so widely recognized that 5% of its revenue comes from teaching them to other businesses.

“I started my company with the 40 hour work week,” company president Tina Hamilton told Fortune. “I had owned another business where I personally, along with my employees, worked 70, 80, 90 hours. It’s how I grew up. When I sold that business and had some time to come down, I started to think about what kind of life I wanted. I was in my 30s, I had some money in the bank, and that’s what I decided: I would always hire enough people and to do that I had to pay for 40 hours, not 70 hours. I had no idea that people would want to flock toward us and want to work here.”

Because of a big jump in her business, she’s paid some people to work 45 hours instead of 40, but only until she can hire more help. She sees a danger. “If I see they’re working 45 hours and I’m making more money because I don’t have more overhead, that’s greed,” she says. “I have to keep my promise.”

Tech start-ups are notorious for long and late hours. Never Settle makes a point of saying, “We only work 40 hours per week, seriously.” The company has been doing this for two years so far after founder Kenn Kelly, who worked “an average of 60 hours a week over the last 7 years,” wondered “if this really was the right thing to do.” So far, the benefits of the experiment “have been monumental in the sanity and productivity of the team.”

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated BambooHR’s location and number of employees, and it incorrectly stated the name of Skift’s founder. The story has been corrected. Fortune regrets the errors.

5 states with the most Fortune 500 companies

Go West. That’s one message of this year’s Fortune 500 when considered geographically. California is in third place when it comes to the number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the state (53), lagging behind New York (with 55) and Texas (with 54) – but the list’s center of gravity is decidedly western. California’s companies lead in market cap, sales, and job creation, thanks to booming tech and biotech sectors.

Overall, nearly 44% — 219 — of America’s Fortune 500 companies have their headquarters in these 5 states. California’s Fortune 500 companies’ aggregate market cap — $3.7 trillion, up from $3.2 trillion last year – now accounts for 21% of the Fortune 500, a larger share than any other state. Credit the many California’s tech companies, whose ranking on the list rocketed higher this year: GileadGILD, Salesforce.comCRM, FacebookFB, and NetflixNFLX among them. And California companies bucked the flat sales trend at Fortune 500 companies in the top five states. Sales in California’s companies rose $100 million in aggregate, thanks again to the tech boom.

Another notable geographic shift: After Illinois, which again places fourth in how many Fortune 500 companies it hosts (34), Ohio replaces New Jersey at number five in revenue, thanks to list members including Procter & GamblePG, Corning GlassGLW and the state’s now-biggest company, KrogerKR, a grocery chain that has grown through both acquisition and expansion. Experts say Ohio generally has diversified its economic base since the recession, adding to its advanced manufacturing more research and development, and attracting Chinese investment.

Another theme this year: Texas-based companies overall manage to sustain profitability despite the tribulations of falling oil prices amid a global oversupply. Cheap gas has cost the oil giants billions of dollars. Yet Texas’ petroleum-based Fortune 500 companies have retained their super-profitability often through layoffs, squeezing more from their workforces, and by cutting back some on major exploration and construction projects.

Mirroring the bull market, Fortune 500 companies’ market cap rose in the top five top states, buoyed by low interest rates and corporate stock buy-backs — especially in standout California. Market value climbed most in the Golden State – by 14% – thanks to tech and life sciences. The other top states’ Fortune 500 companies, together, posted single-digit gains: 9% in Ohio, 8% in Illinois, 4% in Texas, and 2% in New York. Value in New York, in aggregate, rose $50 million — a fraction of California’s $400 million in total gains. Fortune 500 company profits rose in Texas and California, pushed again by the tech and petroleum sectors; in New York, a gain in overall profitability was helped by recovering financial sector companies including JPMorgan ChaseJPYYL and MetLifeMET.

Job growth was nearly nonexistent in most of the top five states’ Fortune 500 companies. In number one New York, jobs shrank 5% at Fortune 500 companies. Still, New York tops the list in aggregate number of jobs, at 2.86 million. (It has held that top spot for jobs the past decade.) Texas surprises as the jobs exception: Even with the volatility in its dominant oil sector, jobs at Texan Fortune 500 companies grew 4%. That growth was in line with the national trend (the Department of Labor counted 3 million jobs added the year to April 2015, a fourth straight year of solid, moderate gains).

The world’s 10 largest employers

Global organizations have left the recession behind as they focus on positioning themselves aggressively for growth—and building a workforce big enough to sustain their business while staving off the competition is integral to future success.

Fortune has compiled its first-ever list of the world’s 10 biggest employers among publicly listed companies, based on latest fiscal-year-end figures from FactSet Research Systems, annual reports, and other publicly available information. In the cases where companies provide a specific breakdown of part-time and full-time employee figures, we count part-time employees as half of a “full-time equivalent” worker. If companies do not provide a breakdown, all employees are considered full-time.

On our list, size matters: Of the top 10 employers, six had revenues above $100 billion in their most recent fiscal year. These global giants hail from a variety of industries including retail, business services, energy, and banking, some of which are more labor-intensive than others, thus dictating a need for more employees. The companies are based throughout the world, representing six countries; China is the home base for three of them, followed by the U.S. and the U.K., each with two on the list. We included efficiency data for these companies, measured by revenue per employee based on 2013 annual figures. A few of these firms may surprise you, while others are well known for their size and reach.